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The Goodluck Jonathan Foundation (GJF) has announced that it has assembled distinguished African statesmen and global development experts for the 2025 Democracy Dialogue scheduled to hold in Accra, Ghana, on September 17, 2025.
According to a statement on Tuesday, the leaders headlining the event include Ghanaian President John Dramani Mahama, former Nigerian Presidents Chief Olusegun Obasanjo and Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, former Prime Minister of Burkina Faso and former President of the Commission of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Kadré Désiré Ouédraogo, current President of the ECOWAS Commission Dr. Omar Alieu Touray, as well as Most Rev. Matthew Hassan Kukah, the Catholic Bishop of Sokoto Diocese.
It stated that this year’s dialogue with the theme, ‘Why Democracies Die’, which will be co-hosted by the Foundation in collaboration with the Government of Ghana, will give participants the opportunity to beam their searchlights on the progress, challenges and prospects of decades of democratic rule in the sub-region. It will be chaired by Chief Obasanjo, while Bishop Kukah will serve as the keynote speaker.
The statement signed by Jonathan’s media aide, Ikechukwu Eze, added that the 2025 Dialogue is the 4th in the series since 2021, when the Foundation launched the annual discourse as a way of constantly interrogating democratic governance in the sub-region as a means of gauging its sustainability and impact on the lives of the people.
“Last year’s dialogue, which focused on purposeful education, featured Prof. Olubayi Olubayi, a seasoned educationist and Chief Academic Officer at Maarifa Education in Kenya and former Vice Chancellor of the International University of East Africa (IUEA) in Uganda.
It would be recalled that in his keynote speech, Prof. Olubayi made a strong case for African countries to establish highly selective, merit-based institutions and elite, research-intensive universities to serve as the anchors of functional education and drivers of technological growth.
“It is expected that the keynote speaker, Bishop Kukah, panelists and other resource persons at the 2025 Dialogue would throw more light on what needs to be done to arrest the pattern of decline and gradual erosion of rules and norms which democracies have continued to experience in Africa,” it said.
Speaking ahead of the programme, Ms Ann Iyonu, the Executive Director Goodluck Jonathan Foundation, stated that the event would bring together a cross-section of key political leaders, policy makers, elected representatives and pro-democracy civil society organisations from across the world.
She described the theme of the conference, ‘Why Democracies Die’ as a logical next step to the previous themes, which had focused on “how states gain legitimacy, how democracy delivers, and how leadership is cultivated.”
She said: “This is now the time for the Dialogue to boldly pose the hardest question bordering on why democracies die.”
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